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Robert Bratcher, the New Testament translator of the Good News Bible which became a best-selling version in the 1970s, died July 10 at a retirement community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 90.

He became involved in controversy with Southern Baptist fundamentalists in 1981 by contending that belief in an inerrant Bible is idolatry and intellectual dishonesty. But it was an earlier argument with his denomination that led him into a new translating career.